Keywords
In the context of sound propagation in buildings, we must differentiate between building parts which produce noise actively (water conducting parts, facilities with electrical motors and other equipment) and building parts which do not cause any noise but have a sound protecting function, such as e.g. ceilings or walls. We recognise that certain building parts do not change their sound protection function for long decades, while other parts are getting sound proof leaky due to amortisation (e.g. carpets, water spouts, window gaskets) or due to slow deformation in buildings (plaster dwellings, window and door surrounds). Moreover, various building parts are insufficiently dimensioned concerning their noise protection or have been carried out in a wrong way. This inevitably leads to an overhaul as mentioned above.
The questions of the acoustic impact on a section of the population and the intelligibility of speech in transmission systems or in room acoustics are being treated in terms of statistics without consideration of the scatter in human perceptiveness. Both the nuisance threshold and the threshold for other kinds of perception differ from person to person and have a relatively wide scatter. Different approaches therefore cannot be extended to other investigations conducted with other parameters. The fidelity index method for music transmission is discussed by analogy with the articulation index method for speech transmission. Because of the scatter in human requirements and sensitivity as regards noise, we discuss the indifference levels and the classification of sensitivity in the categories “sensitive,” “normal,” and “insensitive.” The correlation of the results with those obtained by means of information theory is pointed out.
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